Miami's True Immigrant Problem

When I type “Latinos for Trump” into Google, the front image of the webpage displays President Trump outdoors, sitting with his chest tall at a desk. Behind him stands a group of seven men and two women, each smiling as he appears to sign a document. 

In the last few years, my Miami hometown has been littered with yard signs and bumper stickers declaring “Latinos for Trump.” But when I searched recently for the website, I found that the movement had been renamed “Latino Americans for Trump.” 

The President’s campaign rebranded this initiative in the summer of 2024, right before the election, in an effort by Trump’s communications director “to emphasize that Latinos are American.” But the rebranding might have considered specifying which Latinos, exactly, this label would include. Such clarification may have saved Miamians some anguish…and perhaps preserved their protected status in the United States. Somehow it seems Trump’s past term and recent campaign did not make his position on immigration clear enough. 

Trump’s stance has long been aggressive and unwavering: in office he promised to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The phrase “mass deportation now” caught on during Trump’s campaign, with crowds chanting “send them back, send them back.” Yet when Trump moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in early February, the Venezuelans of Miami-Dade were shocked. This is the same Venezuelan community who drove Trump’s South Florida victory in November. And, now, they feel betrayed and confused by the man they supported, believing all along he would be the one to take down Nicolás Maduro--not the one to return them to his oppressive State. 

Venezuelans of Miami-Dade, why send them back, and not you? The real betrayal was not between Trump and immigrants, but within immigrant communities themselves. 

Trump’s victory in Doral—a 40% Venezuelan municipality of Miami-Dade—was decisive. When a city largely composed of immigrants bolsters a candidate known for his xenophobia, the question of why feels crucial.

I can’t help wondering why Venezuelan voters ignore the promises of a platform which works against immigrants--like the vow to “end birthright citizenship,” authorize ICE raids, and use the “military and National Guard [to] round up and deport unauthorized migrants.” I wonder what they heard when Trump singled out Venezuelan migrants as “criminals” in over 64% of his speeches in the last year. And I almost envy the grace which allows Doral Venezuelans to forgive a president who tried to end TPS in his first term, and the goodwill to entrust him now with their U.S. residency. 

Perhaps Trump’s favor in Doral wasn’t a product of grace or goodwill--but of true belief. One Miamian, Richard Yepez, stated in 2019 that “Trump is the first president to follow through on his promise for Venezuela.” Yepez would use his vote to “reward [Trump] for [the] forceful push against Maduro,” Venezuela’s  dictator. After all, the previous Trump administration “tightened the screws on Venezuela” by “slamming sanctions on individuals, oils and banks,” as well as pulling out U.S. diplomats. 

Meanwhile, other voters were drawn to Trump precisely for his outlook on immigration. Miamian Gustavo Garagorry, who fled Venezuela in 1998, agrees with the president’s characterization of recent immigrants as “violent criminals.” This division between old and new immigrants festers in established Venezuelan-American communities like Doral. Garagorry, and like-minded voters, are invested in “protecting the respect he feels he and many other Venezuelans worked for decades to earn through their labor and efforts to assimilate.” This means keeping out the “worst elements of his country– delinquents, criminals, and gang members.” 

I understand the desire to represent the best of a community. Until moving to Tennessee for school, I did not understand that there are people in this country who believe all Spanish speakers to be dangerous Mexicans. And, though I do not pretend to know firsthand the experience of immigration, I know I could have been the daughter of an illegal Venezuelan as easily as I was born the child of a legal Ecuadorian. 

So know this, Venezuelans of Miami-Dade: to Trump you are no different than the Cuban who stepped foot in Key West last year and now substitutes at your kid’s school. You are no different than the pet-eating Haitians, your Nicaraguan neighbor, or my Colombian friend. And though, like Garagorry, you may think Trump can differentiate you from Venezuelan criminals because you “get up at 6 in the morning to earn a living for [your family],” you are mistaken.

If you came here to give your family a safe, prosperous life—or have parents who did that for  you—don’t turn your back on others trying to do the same. 

Valentina Pereda, a co-founder of the Venezuelan Diaspora Project, framed this responsibility best: "everybody ultimately is chasing the same American dream…to choose to deport members of our community, to break us apart, that's very short-sighted, self-centered, and it weakens us.” She urges us to ask how we can come together. How can we make “Latinos for Trump,” instead, “Latinos for Latinos?”